Nicotine
by TheWheelWeaves
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is brought a case of a woman who does not exist. Rose Tyler does not belong in the Beta Universe, and needs a brilliant mind to get her out. NOT a part of This Rose is Extra series.


**In case you missed it in the description, this is NOT a story within my This Rose is Extra 'verse. This is a completely separate piece of RoseLock.**

**A bit of information before you start, in case you want to back out now. First, this is a bit steamy. By a bit steamy, I pretty much mean that it's overtly sexual and if you're not into smutty stuff, you should probably abandon ship now. Second, this is a bit angsty. The ever spectacular WhoLockGal, my betababe, called it 'heartbreaking,' so if that isn't your thing, again, I won't be offended if you don't read it.**

**I know I'm supposed to be writing a full-length fic, but a few days ago, I was listening to Panic! At the Disco's ****_Nicotine,_**** and this story appeared, more or less, fully formed in my mind and would not leave me alone until I put words to paper.**

**I very much hope you enjoy!**

**Standard disclaimers stand- these characters belong to their respective writers and the BBC. I make no money from this, it's all in good fun!**

**Please see A/N at the end for more information on This Rose is Extra.**

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Sherlock's blood buzzed under his skin as his lips skated across warm smooth skin. His ears were filled with panting breaths and low moans, and his nose with the smell of expensive perfume and feminine arousal. His mouth found the dark thatch of curls that did not match the sunshine gold of her hair and moved to the secret at their center. His tongue found warm, wet heat- salt and sweet and almost unbearably potent. The buzz picked up, and his brain seemed to run on overdrive. Like caffeine or nicotine, the stimulant of Rose Tyler was potent and he could feel the puzzle pieces of the last few months coming together as his tongue worked over her clitoris in an effort to make her come apart.

**_Rose Tyler, Vitex Heiress_**_, Sherlock read. No word of her before about two weeks previous when Jackie Tyler had been recovered from the Cyberman prisons. Now, suddenly, there was a 21-year-old girl in the great family that had never existed before. Sherlock was certain that she had never existed because Mycroft had brought the case to him. Mycroft was many things (lazy, pompous, a bully) but thorough in his data gathering was one of the most important._

_If Mycroft's sources could find no hint of her from before, it was because there was no hint of her._

_Sherlock would not admit to any particular interest in the case, but looking at the image of the sunny blonde with the sad eyes, he found that he could not turn his brother down. He had done so initially, however, because it was expected, but had not continued to deny when Mycroft had insisted. Those haunted, whiskey-coloured eyes had caught at something in his soul._

She continued to give encouraging little whimpers, but Sherlock could tell that he would never bring her to completion this way, he needed to provide additional stimulation. He brought a hand up and teased her entrance with one long, narrow finger before sliding in and being rewarded with a low, husky moan and a few choice curses that she had probably learned on the streets of Peckham rather than the elite boarding schools that were on her records. Sherlock's mouth continued to work that marvelous bundle of nerves that was designed for no purpose but to give a woman pleasure as he added a second finger. He curled them forward, seeking something that he had only an academic knowledge of. He listened to the change in pitch and timbre in her voice to determine when he found it, and when she let out a cry that wasn't quite a scream, Sherlock could have sworn that the sound hit his system like a long-awaited drag from a cigarette.

_He knew that she came to this chippy every Wednesday afternoon, he had been watching her for some six weeks. She would order her chips and sit for 49 minutes exactly, writing and drawing on a notepad that she kept at her right hand. Some days she ate the chips almost as an afterthought as her hand flew wildly over the paper. Other days she stared at the paper as though it were a puzzle she had to unlock and there were no hints._

_Sherlock wondered if she were an author, but she drew diagrams as well as wrote words, so he eventually dismissed that notion. A designer, he deduced, probably in technology, though where she had her information from he did not know. No school records, no travel records. She did not exist._

_One Wednesday, he approached her table with his own basket of chips that were destined never to be eaten._

_"Do you mind if I join you?" he asked jovially- just come across as a fool looking to talk to a pretty girl, he told himself._

_"Yeah, I mind. Sorry, mate," she said without looking up from her notebook. It was a day without progress, Sherlock knew, but she was clearly not looking for distraction._

_"Well, there's not really anywhere else to sit." Sherlock glanced around the crowded chippy dramatically, though she never looked up to see it. "Can I sit anyway? You needn't talk to me." At least if he sat and she didn't, he might be able to catch a glimpse of what she was writing (or not writing) in that notebook of hers._

_She shrugged, still not looking up, and Sherlock took the seat across from her as though this had been consent. When she did not object, he took it as such. He fiddled with his chips but did not eat. He could not read what she was working on upside-down, so he would have to play another card. He took a few minutes, then, resuming the roll of besotted idiot, he spoke again._

_"My name is..." Sherlock's mind raced. His name was too well-known. She probably knew Mycroft. John's name wasn't as well-known as his, not quite, he could risk it. "...John Watson."_

_She looked away from her notebook for the first time, but it was not with interest or dismissal, she looked angry._

_"Whatever you think you want from me, you can't have. I don't care if it's my dad or some secret you think I know, I'm a lot more dangerous than you think I am." Her chips were only half finished, but she slapped her notebook closed and stood, glaring at him, to leave. After only three steps, she turned and made a parting shot. "If you want to pull your code names from fiction, how about something that everyone in the universe hasn't already read?"_

She cried out in a breathy voice to a nameless deity and her internal muscles clenched around his fingers before exploding in spasms and coating his hand in warmth and wetness. He kept moving his fingers, and kept some gentle pressure on her clitoris with his tongue as her body came down from the peak. When she was bonelessly relaxed, he pulled away from her center with a final salute of a kiss. He moved up her slowly, continuing to brush kisses across her now sweat-sheened skin, tasting the flavour of her completion on all parts of her body, not merely her core. He brushed over her sensitive nipples, enjoying her squeak as he took one into his mouth for a hot, hard suck. His final goal, however, was her mouth, and when he found it, he gave himself over to the drug of her kiss with abandon.

_Sherlock had told Mycroft that the investigation was compromised and that he would not continue. They both knew that Sherlock would not, in fact, abandon an open case, but Sherlock "giving up" meant that it would take much longer than the expected timeline, and if Mycroft bothered him about it, Sherlock would merely tell his brother that he was no longer on the case. It was a peculiar form of communication between the siblings- more was left unsaid than said._

_Five weeks after the disaster at the chippy, someone rang the bell at Baker Street and was shown up by Mrs. Hudson like a guest. Sherlock, in his dressing gown, was shocked to find himself confronted by a small woman with bleached blonde hair in a pair of loose jeans, a navy blue shirt, and a black coat._

_"You're Sherlock Holmes," she said without preamble. "Like the stories."_

_"What stories?" he asked, not even bothering to answer the implied question. "You mean John's blog?"_

_"I mean the stories," she said, sounding angry. "The ones about the consulting detective who knew everything about anyone he met just by looking at them. The master of deductive reasoning. The stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson."_

_Sherlock raised an eyebrow. She had grown more agitated as she talked. She did not sit, as most people did when entering the room, but paced instead, allowing her fingers to trail over items on the shelves and mantle. She did not pause at Billy the skull, she merely brushed her fingers over it and continued with her rant._

_"I know no one named Arthur Conan Doyle, but John Watson is my flatmate who blogs about my cases."_

_"A blogger," she breathed, not looking at him. "And you... what? Was the hound of the Baskerville's an alien or genetic mutation? What about Irene Adler? A pop star instead of an opera singer?"_

_Sherlock frowned. The Baskerville and Belgravia cases had not yet made it onto John's blog and were, therefore, relatively unknown, though The Woman was hardly a pop singer. Before he could answer, however, she continued._

_"You know what, it doesn't matter. What were you doing in the chippy the other day? What do you want from me?"_

_"I want to know who you are, Rose Tyler." Sherlock did not miss the tension that overtook her at his use of her full name. "Why don't you exist before Jackie Tyler was saved from the Lumic prisons? Who is your mother? Pete Tyler might be your father, but Jackie Tyler never had a child. Why have you never been caught on CCTV in London or anywhere else in Great Britain except for one single night when you served drinks at Jackie's 40__th__ birthday party and helped to overthrow John Lumic? Where did you go after that? Who are you?_

_She gave a humourless laugh. "Oh, just that? Well that's simple enough. I'm from a parallel universe. I was born on Earth but spent three years traveling with an alien in a time-and-space ship that looks like a phone box but is bigger on the inside and had no limits to where it could go. I showed up in this universe in time to save the world from the Cybermen and get rejected by my parallel father, then I went back. I got stuck here after the Cybermen pushed through a crack in the universe to invade my home universe. That's all. Simple enough. Are you going to stop stalking me now?"_

_"I will get an honest answer," Sherlock said threateningly._

_Rose Tyler smiled wryly. "Maybe you will."_

Sherlock continued to kiss her mouth, but his fingers remained restless. They found the secret places that made her shiver- the inside of her elbow, the underside of her breast, the spot behind her ear, and the point at the back of her neck that was usually covered by hair. His fingers dipped into her navel and up her ribs. His hand smoothed over the flat of her stomach and the planes of her back. He settled his hands on her derriere, and kneaded the soft flesh there as she moaned into his mouth. She tasted of tea and danger and adrenaline and honey and sex. It was a potent flavour to which he was rapidly becoming addicted.

_For a month she disappeared from London. Mycroft's sources were able to determine that Pete, Jackie and Rose Tyler had gone to the continent and were, to the best of their ability to track (Mycroft's shame was his department's comparative lack of eyes in Europe) moving north. Four weeks they were gone. Mycroft believed that they were in Norway, and informed Sherlock when they returned from some tiny seaside village after spending three nights running there. When Rose Tyler returned to London, she took on the mantle of "Vitex Heiress" with aplomb. She began working for charities and attending functions. She was photographed for the papers and trade magazines. She wore fixed smiles and there was no resemblance to the angry woman who had paced the sitting room of 221 B Baker Street and had talked of aliens and parallel universes._

_Sherlock got on a catering staff of one of the events that Rose was working. He had thought he was safe- no one noticed waiters at these sorts of parties. She caught him within 15 minutes of him entering and threw him out, but not before he had gotten close enough to see that her bright smiles did not reach her dark eyes. Rose Tyler apparently saw the invisible, and Sherlock made mental note of that._

_The next time, he had Mycroft procure him an actual invitation to the event. He wore his own tuxedo and walked through the front door. He was served champagne and took a second glass when he spotted his prey in a blue and silver gown, hair sleeked back, lips smiling, eyes screaming. He sidled up to her, glass in hand as an offering. He knew she would see him, so he was making a frontal assault._

_"This is a charity," she said, plucking the wine from the hand that offered it. "You can't just sneak in. The cost of those invitations goes to a cause."_

_"I have an invitation, and it was paid for," Sherlock said, sipping his wine deliberately. He was, actually, not certain that was the truth. Mycroft had procured the invite, and there was no telling how he had managed it._

_"Why are you here?"_

_"I might ask you the same thing."_

_"I am on the board for this organization, it would be strange if I were not here. You can do better than that, Sherlock Holmes."_

_"You come to these things, you smile, you put on a good face, but you are unhappy. You'd rather be elsewhere, so why are you here? You have the means to do anything you could possibly want."_

_The bark of laughter that she gave was a bitter, angry sort of a sound. "Money," she spat. "It should be able to accomplish anything, yes? And the child of Vitex has money. Little enough else- no autonomy, no privacy, no independence, but money she has in abundance. If money could get me where I want to go, Mr. Holmes, I would not be here."_

_Sherlock was stunned at the bitter despair in her voice at odds with the sunny smile she continued to cast about the room. The despair was only too familiar- it was much like that which had driven him to the needle initially. Money had not been able to save him, nor had his brother's power. Sherlock had been forced to save himself, and John Watson had been instrumental in giving him the strength to do so._

_"If not money or power, what would be needed?" Sherlock was somewhat shocked to hear the words coming from his own mouth. Something about Rose Tyler spoke to him and he wanted to take the pain and despair out of her voice._

_"I would need the greatest mind in the universe," she answered._

_Sherlock met her eyes, and saw the challenge in them. A challenge he found himself wanting desperately to meet._

His fingers returned to her center, to the wet heat there and began pumping again. The keening noises of her rising need fed his own and he knew he would not be able to abstain for much longer. Her hands had not spent the time idle. They flickered over his nipples, the hard planes of his chest and stomach. One hand tangled in his dark hair, fingernails scratching across his scalp in a way that nearly shattered his control completely. When she drew her fingernails up his spine, he withdrew from her mouth and instead applied his teeth to the join of her shoulder and neck. Her long 'oh' of pleasure was a hit of a drug more potent than any he had ever experienced.

_Four weeks they spent together in the basement of the skyscraper at Canary Wharf. She presented her team's findings on the multiverse and he was forced to accept that, from a research perspective, they had a compelling argument. It did not prove that Rose Tyler was from another universe, but it did open the possibilities._

_As they worked on the theorem for breaching the walls between the universes, Sherlock determined that this was well beyond the scope of his knowledge. However, he was nothing if not capable of integrating new knowledge into his base, and he found himself highly motivated to do precisely that. He found that he wanted to impress Rose Tyler._

_Four weeks of close quarters, late nights, hastily grabbed meals, and occasional nights spent asleep beside one another, heads on tables in the Torchwood laboratories. John noticed Sherlock's absence from their flat and from the normal activities of their lives but was placated with a terse explanation that Sherlock was "on a case," and not one with which he required John's assistance. The doctor might have been mildly offended by this, but he did not continue to question his friend._

_Sherlock began to grow attached to the strange, serious young woman with whom he was spending all of his time now. She had the capacity for great empathy, sparkling insights, razor-sharp humour, and vicious temper. Sherlock had even begun to believe her assertions that she was from another universe, despite his logical mind telling him that it was impossible. Her speech was not that of a woman from the upper class, and her stories of growing up in a council flat in Peckham rang far more true than her official biography. Even her stories of traveling the stars seemed plausible. Sherlock was forced to admit that he was not helping Rose Tyler prove some theory, but helping her get home._

_He did not want to let her leave, but he was quickly coming to depend on the brilliant smile she gave him every time they made a breakthrough to see him through the dark nights._

Her fingers made the slide from his stomach to his groin. She wrapped her hand loosely around his hardness and very gently stroked up once, twice, three times. She then took a firmer grip and settled into rhythm that, in his current state, would have him losing control far too soon. Sherlock removed his fingers from inside of her and gripped her wrist to stop her. She gave a soft noise of distress at the loss of his fingers, but she gave a feline smile of satisfaction when he removed her hand from his penis. She glanced over at the nightstand on which several condoms were scattered for ease of access. Sherlock sat up to do what was necessary, then settled himself over Rose again, poised at her entrance. He raised a single eyebrow in question and, at her nod, sank into her. Colour burst behind his eyes, more glorious and more powerful than any drug.

_The Gordian Knot of their design finally fell to the razor's edge of Sherlock's mind. The Dimension Cannon- a device to hurl a person at the walls of the universe and break through- was designed. It needed to be built and tested, but the hard part was now over._

_"It could destroy the universe," Sherlock said to her, looking at the plans._

_"It could," she answered quietly._

_"You had me help you make something that could destroy this entire universe so that you could get back to the other?" Sherlock was furious. He felt manipulated- how many times would a woman wreak havoc on him for her own ends? "You want so badly to return to a universe where you're a shop girl from the wrong side of London that you would see this universe collapse?"_

_"You said it _could_ collapse the universe, not that it _would_."_

_"You would run that risk with your parents' lives? Your brother's? Mine?"_

_"What could compel me to stay?" she asked._

_There was that challenge again. Her eyes said the words that her mouth did not. They begged him to prove to her that she had something worth staying, and Sherlock- control already at breaking point from over a month in her intoxicating presence- found himself equal to the task._

_He took her mouth in a plundering kiss. He gave no quarter- if she wanted him to prove that he would keep her here, then he would get started immediately. Hands roamed over hips, backsides, chests and into hair. Sherlock found that he had one hand at her waist, breast framed by his index finger and thumb, while the other hand fisted in her hair to hold her head in place so that he could continue to ravage her mouth. One of her hands was at his bum, squeezing, the other on his shoulder._

_"Not here," she gasped when finally she was able to pull her mouth from his._

_"I know," Sherlock growled and took her hand to lead her away._

_They stumbled out of the laboratory, caught a cab and, without any time seeming to have passed, made it to her flat._

Sherlock wanted to make it last. He wanted to go slow, continuing to stoke the flames which had begun until they were a roaring bonfire that could not be put out by any means. He found, however, once he was fully seated inside of her, that the wildfire was already blazing and he was helpless to stop it. His rhythm was rough, fast, and very nearly harsh. He wanted to imprint himself upon her body so that she could no longer consider leaving. The rough words coming from her now spoke of approval. She was incoherent save for 'faster,' 'yes,' 'god,' and 'fuck.'

Sherlock was nearly there, but he sensed that she was as well so, tamping down his reaction, he changed his angle slightly. The music of her voice changed, and he knew that he had it right. Like improvising on the violin, a tiny change in the pressure of his fingers made all the difference and she shattered beneath him, pulsing around him. The glory of it was too much, and he fell right after her, swimming into madness that was sweeter than alcohol, more potent than nicotine, more glorious than opiates.

When, finally, they both returned to coherence, Sherlock looked at Rose carefully.

"The cannon plans. They're dangerous. Are they worth it?"

She hesitated for a long moment. "Someday, we may find that it's necessary to cross the void. I won't destroy the plans, but I won't use them."

Sherlock was not entirely happy with that. The universe should be protected. When she fell asleep in his arms some 20 minutes later, he considered her mobile phone. He could put in an order from her number to have the plans destroyed, but she would know it was him. Now that he had tasted her, he thought he would never be able to get her out of his system. She sang in his blood, so he abstained. He would trust her.

A week later, the stars began going out.

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**A/N: This story is a little bit of a preemptive apology. The next story in my This Rose is Extra 'verse may be late. I am trying my best to have it finished and ready to begin publishing by June 14 (for very important reasons). I am so sorry for the continued delays, and I hope this little bit of sexiness helps you not want to storm my house and set fire to my cats.**


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